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Check It Out: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Hello, I’m Jessi Wakefield of the Sioux City Public Library and you're listening to Check It Out.

Today, I am recommending the Nonfiction New York Times Bestseller Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. After the discovery of oil in the 1920s under the land of the Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma, tribe members became the some of the wealthiest individuals in the world.  They lived in mansions, sent their children to schools in Europe, had servants, and had more money than most of America. They lived their lives as they saw fit, which completely outraged their white neighbors. One by one, the Osage Millionaires began to be killed off. The reader is brought into the story through one woman, Mollie Burkhart, who watched as her family was systematically murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother then slowly poisoned. And this was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances, including a house that was blown up killing the inhabitants. Things became so abhorrently corrupt, that anyone from the region who even attempted to solve the case, was murdered themselves. By the time outside agencies were involved, more than 24 individuals had been murdered. The newly created F.B.I. took up the case and became the first major homicide investigation. J. Edgar Hoover turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try unravel this mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history. But this was a story that needed to be told. Grann, as with his other nonfiction book Lost City of Z, has written a thoughtful, well researched account and made it teeming with humanity. Visit the Sioux City Public Library for this title and other blockbuster nonfiction selections.

Support for Check It Out comes from Avery Brothers.